Mugabe’s machinations

Any day now, Zimbabwe’s highest court is expected to hand Robert Gabriel Mugabe five more years to add to the 33 spent at the helm of his country. Four years after the bloodshed of the previous elections resulted in an internationally brokered unity government comprising Mr. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the President has delivered a largely peaceful if not entirely credible election. In 2008, Mr. Mugabe was trailing the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai when the security forces essentially ended the contest by killing more than 200 people. This time around, the 89-year-old liberation veteran won 61 per cent of the vote, while his party claimed a two-thirds majority in parliament. The African Union and Zimbabwe’s neighbours, barring Botswana, have cautiously endorsed the result but have rightly pointed to serious shortcomings in the polling process — particularly voter registration, inaccurate voters’ rolls, printing of millions of additional ballot papers and the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters. The conduct of the electoral commission, as Mr. Tsvangirai noted, resembled a referee who had thrown away his whistle and joined the other team. Mr. Tsvangirai had asked Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court to nullify the elections, but withdrew his challenge on the expectation that the judiciary is unlikely to cross swords with Mr. Mugabe. Nevertheless, the court, which had directed the government to hold general elections by July 31 at all costs, is expected to rule on the matter on Tuesday.

If Mr. Mugabe has manipulated the process, Mr. Tsvangirai must also accept that his party was hopelessly outmanoeuvred. The MDC was caught unawares by the sudden declaration of polls and went into the election in two minds, promising victory while insisting that the process was rigged against them. Torn between its many constituencies of white farmers, western allies, trade unions, civil society, disaffected urban youth, and the countless others alienated by ZANU-PF’s interminable rule, the MDC failed to put forward a clear agenda. The ZANU-PF, in the meantime, spent four years fine-tuning its party machinery, rallying its supporters, demonising its detractors and spelling out a coherent strategy of land reform and indigenisation that consolidated its impressive rural mass base. After a decade of economic turmoil, ZANU-PF’s controversial land reform has delivered farms to hundreds of thousands of families, while the dollarisation of the economy has lent some stability to the national economy. In the run-up to this election, Mr. Mugabe’s supporters and critics were predicting a ZANU-PF victory anyway; the tragedy of the managed polls is that we shall never really know for sure.

Quality German newspapers like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported extensively on the recent elections in Zimbabwe. One point is absolutely clear, the history of Zimbabwe is intricately intertwined with the life story of Mr Mugabe. He was a hero in the struggle for his country´s liberation from the clutches of a white supremacist colonial government. For more than 10 years, Mugabe was a political prisoner. He regained his freedom in December 1974 and immediately rejoined the fight from bases in Mozambique
The cumulative effect of his commitment, sacrifice and consequent popularity coupled with the fact that he belongs to the majority Shona ethnic group earned him a deserved election victory in March 1980 and he emerged the Prime Minister of independent Zimbabwe. In 1987, the position of Prime Minister was abolished and Mugabe assumed the new office of executive president which vested him with additional powers. Since then he has been re-elected in 1990, 1996 and 2002 amid allegations of vote rigging and intimidation. The manipulations and subsequent violence with characterised the 2008 elections drew world-wide attention. A power arrangement was eventually devised as a solution to the crisis.
According to The Hindu and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the elections on July 31, 2013 were pretty credible. To be fair Mr Mugabe has no doubt rendered unquantifiable service to Zimbabwe. He made a lot of sacrifice so that his people could be free. It should be apparent to him that at the age of 89 and after 33 years in office, his heroic deeds of the distant past cannot but pale into insignificance when juxtaposed with the recent atrocities he is alleged to have committed in his desperation to cling to power.
One point is clear one cannot imagine Zimbabwe without Mr Mugabe.

from:
kurt waschnig

Posted on: Aug 20, 2013 at 08:55 IST

The West was able to starve Zimbabwe for a decade because they were Zimbabwe's only customers. Mugabe was able to deliver some goods to the people lately because he was able to diversify the clientele for Zimbabwe's natural resources, primarily by trading with China.